Saturday, August 10 2013

REDCAT: The third week of the festival concludes with three new works from Daniel Corral, Morgan Thorson & Meg Wolfe, and Paul Fraser, Genevieve Gearhart & Deena Selenow.

DANIEL CORRAL: DISLIKE

Composer Daniel Corral's Dislike exposes the dark side of online anonymity and open-forum communication by constructing a libretto from commentary on YouTube's most “disliked” video. As the eight-piece accordion orchestra Free Reed Conspiracy envelops the listener in a lush and comforting sonic world, members of The People’s Microphony Camerata speak and sing user-posted comments—a surreal text filled with anger, mischief, naivety, homophobia and desperation. Dislike is a 21st century operatic testament to the breadth of emotions swirling around the Internet.

MORGAN THORSON & MEG WOLFE: THE OTHER THING

Two singular dance artists, Los Angeles-based Meg Wolfe and Minneapolis-based Morgan Thorson, perform a living, and moving, document of the process of human connection. A series of choreographic encounters staged in multiple cities allowed Thorson and Wolfe to trace the interactions that unlocked mutual recognition. In intimately paired solos, each dancer performs in new-found proximity, authoring their shared history with varying degrees of authenticity and struggle. The result is a dance done to destroy the awkward state of not knowing each other—exuberant, deficient, tender and daring.

Made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

PAUL FRASER, GENEVIEVE GEARHART & DEENA SELENOW: TOXIKOS

Playful and potent, Toxikos is a tragically delightful pop-theater event from director Deena Selenow, composer Paul Fraser and choreographer Genevieve Gearhart. With an all-female cast of six vocalists, they take on the text of Sophocles' Philoctetes, one of the only Greek plays completely devoid of women, and set it to a sonic deconstruction of Britney Spears' smash hit “Toxic.” Performed to a live score and accompanied by an audience armed with kazoos, Toxikos serves up its irreconcilable moral dilemmas with super-sexy dance moves and the taste of a poison paradise.